Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The bureaucrats have outdone themselves this time. Having failed to win the war of ideas, they’ve now decided to outlaw dissent — politely, of course, wrapped in the usual bureaucratic gauze of “integrity,” “trust,” and “information ecosystems.” The “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change” signed at COP30 in Belém reads like something George Orwell would have rejected for being too on-the-nose.
The bureaucrats have outdone themselves this time. Having failed to win the war of ideas, they’ve now decided to outlaw dissent — politely, of course, wrapped in the usual bureaucratic gauze of “integrity,” “trust,” and “information ecosystems.” The “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change” signed at COP30 in Belém reads like something George Orwell would have rejected for being too on-the-nose.
“Recognizing that the urgency of the climate crisis demands not only decisive action by States, but also the broad engagement of all segments of society…”
The document opens with this predictable invocation of “urgency,” that tired incantation meant to suspend reason and justify whatever comes next. Then, in a breathtaking act of cognitive dissonance, it demands the “broad engagement” of everyone — right after announcing that only one kind of engagement will be tolerated: the kind that affirms the “accurate and evidence-based” line approved by the United Nations and its friends at UNESCO.
That phrase — “accurate and evidence-based” — appears repeatedly, as if repetition alone could substitute for the messy, disputatious process of actual science. The authors claim they are:
“Concerned by the growing impact of disinformation, misinformation, denialism, deliberate attacks on environmental journalists, defenders, scientists, researchers and other public voices…”
Translation: anyone who asks awkward questions about climate models, data uncertainties, or policy failures is now guilty of “denialism” — a term borrowed straight from the lexicon of religious heresy.
If this were merely another puff of diplomatic hot air, it would be laughable. But this Declaration goes further. It openly calls on governments to:
“Create and implement policies and legal frameworks… that promote information integrity on climate change, and respect, protect and promote human rights, including the right to freedom of expression…”
A breathtaking contradiction — the kind that only international bureaucrats can deliver with a straight face. How do you “promote freedom of expression” while crafting laws to decide which expressions are acceptable?
It even instructs technology companies to:
“Assess whether and how platform architecture contributes to the undermining of climate information ecosystem integrity, providing researchers with access to data to ensure transparency and build an evidence base.”
This is not science. It’s surveillance with a moral halo.
The Declaration also proposes that funders:
“Donate to the Global Fund for Information Integrity on Climate Change, administered by UNESCO on behalf of the Initiative.”
The same UNESCO that has spent decades producing feel-good propaganda about “education for sustainable development” will now sit atop a global information czardom, deciding which facts are fit for public consumption. You could not invent a better parody of bureaucratic overreach if you tried.
Of course, every tyrant claims to be acting in defense of “truth.” The Inquisition burned heretics for the purity of the faith. The Soviet Union jailed scientists for questioning Lysenkoism — all in the name of protecting “scientific integrity.” Today’s climate clerisy is no different. They’ve simply replaced the cross with the IPCC logo and the rosary with a PowerPoint deck of emissions charts.
It’s hard not to laugh when the Declaration solemnly pledges to:
“Promote the integrity of information… in line with international human rights law, including freedom of expression standards.”
The authors seem blissfully unaware of the contradiction — or perhaps perfectly aware, and confident no one will call them on it. After all, “freedom of expression” is easy to promise when you’ve already defined “wrong expression” out of existence.
The whole effort reeks of insecurity. If the science were as “settled” as claimed, why this obsession with silencing critics? Why the endless campaigns to “enhance public trust” and “reinforce confidence in climate science”? Genuine science welcomes skepticism; propaganda demands belief.
And make no mistake — this is propaganda. The repeated invocation of “trust” and “integrity” is the language of control, not inquiry. Real trust is earned through openness, debate, and evidence — not imposed by decree. You don’t need a UNESCO-managed “information ecosystem” to tell people that water boils at 100°C. You only need censorship when your “facts” are too fragile to withstand scrutiny.
Perhaps the most infuriating part of this whole charade is its paternalism. The Declaration calls on governments to:
“Promote campaigns on climate change and support initiatives that promote literacy and the public’s right to access reliable information on the matter.”
In plain English, that means: fund propaganda that tells citizens what to think, while labeling opposing views as “unreliable.” It’s the intellectual equivalent of serving baby food to adults — spoon-fed, pre-chewed, and flavorless.
The signatories — Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Uruguay — should be ashamed. These are nations that once prided themselves on open inquiry and democratic debate. Now they’ve joined hands in an effort to codify orthodoxy and punish deviation.
The irony, of course, is that the so-called “climate disinformation” they’re desperate to eradicate often turns out to be inconvenient truth. It was “misinformation” once to question the “hockey stick” graph, until it collapsed under scrutiny. It was “denialism” to point out that climate models have consistently over-predicted warming. It was “dangerous” to note that renewable mandates drive up energy costs and destabilize power grids — until blackouts forced even sympathetic governments to reconsider.
Now, instead of correcting their errors, the climate establishment is doubling down — shifting from persuasion to coercion. Their message is simple: believe, or be silent.
The real danger here isn’t to the climate — it’s to freedom itself. When governments, media, and supranational bodies conspire to determine which opinions may be voiced, science ceases to exist. In its place arises a bureaucratic priesthood — fluent in the language of “sustainability,” “integrity,” and “evidence-based policy,” but utterly blind to its own authoritarianism.
This Declaration, signed under the tropical humidity of Belém, should go down not as a milestone in “information integrity,” but as a monument to intellectual cowardice. Unable to compete in the free marketplace of ideas, the climate establishment has chosen to shut down the market altogether.
They call it “information integrity.” Let’s call it what it is: climate totalitarianism with a smile.
It’s also worth highlighting this comment in my article by Simon Browne:
Yesterday I asked Grok if the Wye and the Monnow were dredged in the past at Monmouth. This is his reply:
‘Historical Evidence of Dredging:
Pre-20th Century: The Wye was regularly dredged for navigation (to maintain depths for boats and trade), which had a secondary flood-prevention benefit. Monmouth was a port town until the 19th century, and dredging removed silt to keep the river navigable.
Mid-20th Century (1940s–1960s): After severe floods (e.g., 1947), the Wye River Board (predecessor to the EA) carried out mechanical dredging near Monmouth Bridge and downstream to clear gravel bars and improve flow. This was explicitly to reduce flood risk to the town center and low-lying areas like Chippenham and Wyesham.
1970s–1980s: Smaller-scale dredging occurred, particularly after the 1979 flood, to remove accumulated sediment at the Monnow-Wye confluence.
Key Source:
“Dredging operations were undertaken by the Wye River Board in the 1950s and 1960s to maintain channel capacity and reduce flood risk in Monmouth.”
1950s–1970s: The Monnow was dredged upstream and at the confluence with the Wye to remove silt and gravel that restricted flow during high rainfall. This was part of joint operations with the Wye River Board.
Post-1998 Flood Response: After major flooding in 1998, limited dredging was carried out near Vauxhall Fields and the Monnow Bridge to improve conveyance.
Monmouth Town Council records confirm dredging in the early 2000s to clear blockages at the weir and sluice gates.
Key Source:
“Desilting and selective dredging of the River Monnow has been undertaken in the past, particularly in the reach through Monmouth, to maintain hydraulic capacity.”
— Monmouthshire County Council Flood Risk Management Plan (2016)
3. Why Dredging Stopped (or Reduced)
Environmental Regulations: From the 1990s onward, dredging became heavily restricted due to:
EU Habitats Directive and Water Framework Directive (2000) – the Wye is a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) due to salmon, otter, and lamprey populations.
Dredging disturbs riverbed habitats and increases downstream sedimentation.
The idea that global warming could paradoxically shut down the Gulf Stream, plunging Europe into a new cold spell—a scenario popularized by the film The Day After Tomorrow—is a powerful narrative.
The idea that global warming could paradoxically shut down the Gulf Stream, plunging Europe into a new cold spell—a scenario popularized by the film The Day After Tomorrow—is a powerful narrative.
However, the latest episode of Klimaschau (Issue 237) challenges these alarmist predictions, scrutinizing the scientific evidence and the methods behind the claims. The segment focuses on skepticism regarding the imminent “tipping” of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
Recall how climatologists like Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) argue that Arctic warming is weakening the AMOC due to an influx of freshwater, potentially causing Europe to become colder and drier.
Rahmstorf relied on cherry-picked data
For example, a 2021 study co-authored by Rahmstorf suggested the AMOC was at its weakest point in over a millennium. Rahmstorf has also been quoted predicting the AMOC could completely cease in 50 to 100 years. Yet, a sharp rebuttal by Kilburn and colleagues (2022) in the same journal. This counter-study accused Rahmstorf’s team of using “selective” or “cherry-picked” data to arrive at their conclusion.
The EIKE Klimaschau video presents criticism that challenges the reliability of the computer models often used by the PIK. Engineer and blogger Frank Bosse (Klimanachrichten) dismisses the PIK’s models as inherently unreliable and susceptible to manipulated data input. He points to the actual, unfiltered measurement data from the RAPID Project. This raw data shows the AMOC has been oscillating unspectacularly around a mean value between 2004 and 2024, with only one clear anomaly around 2010. This directly contradicts the models predicting a dramatic collapse.
Arctic Ice: Not Melting as Fast as Predicted
Further challenging the premises of the AMOC collapse theory (which relies on massive freshwater inflow from melting ice), the EIKE video cites a 2025 study by England et al: The research, which reviewed apocalyptic melting scenarios, concluded that the decline in Arctic sea ice has “significantly slowed down” over the last two decades.
Crucially, there has been no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005.
Conclusion
The EIKE video concludes by linking the current alarmist methodology to the historical controversy of Michael E. Mann’s 1999 “Hockey Stick Study”. The implication is that the use of selective, non-representative data to generate dramatic claims is a recurring pattern in certain climate narratives.
Germany 2025 is the engine room of European industry and the warning siren for anyone who thinks intellectual arrogance and green wishful thinking can outlast the laws of economics. In just six weeks, Germany lost another 125,000 industrial jobs; the grand total since 2019 is pushing a quarter-million—out the door, out the country, or just vanished.
Germany 2025 is the engine room of European industry and the warning siren for anyone who thinks intellectual arrogance and green wishful thinking can outlast the laws of economics. In just six weeks, Germany lost another 125,000 industrial jobs; the grand total since 2019 is pushing a quarter-million—out the door, out the country, or just vanished.
Let’s call it what it is.
The lifeblood of German industry—cheap, reliable energy—is gone. Years of shutting down nuclear, hamstringing coal, and then watching Russian gas evaporate left the country with electricity and gas prices double or triple those in the U.S. or Asia. Every boardroom spreadsheet in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, from chemicals to car parts, is stamped in big red letters: “Relocate or Die.” German executives are now eyeing Texas the way their fathers once eyed the Ruhr Valley.
Auto manufacturing? The pride of the Mittelstand is now a jobs graveyard. Every week, a new headline: Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi, and Ford—all “transitioning” entire factories to mothballs. It’s not just EVs displacing gas engines; it’s Chinese competitors eating Europe’s lunch with cheaper electric cars, and German management teams suddenly realizing their “green transition” costs more than consumers or companies can pay.
And it’s not just cars. Steel, banking, logistics, even machine tools—the backbone sectors—are slashing and burning in the face of runaway costs and toothless export numbers. American and Asian buyers are finding better deals elsewhere, while the German government continues its public hand-wringing and billion-euro “relief budgets” that do little more than slow the bleeding.
Why? In a few words:
Insane domestic energy policy.
China and the U.S. playing chess while Berlin fumbles the checkers.
A green transition managed by committee, guaranteed to please nobody, and survive nothing.
Companies are packing their R&D and production and heading to friendlier climates—literally and figuratively. Want to build a battery gigafactory? Good luck. Bring your job ad to Detroit, Atlanta, or Warsaw and watch how fast the applications pile up.
In Germany, you just watch the gas bill, the union rules, the electricity costs, and the regulatory forms pile up.
The finance press and government quangos will blame “AI” and “digital transformation” as if this is just progress marching on. It’s not. It’s conscious policy choices eviscerating decades of work. “Broader industrial slowdown,” they say—when what they mean is the core pillars of postwar Germany are quietly giving up and shipping off.
The numbers are mind-boggling:
Chemical and steel jobs down double digits.
Automotive layoffs running in the tens of thousands just this year.
A quarter-million high-value jobs gone since 2019—many of them permanent, many never to return.
125,000 job losses in the last six months.
Adjusted for population size, that’s as if in six months every single factory worker in North Carolina lost their job.
All while headlines boast about the “Energiewende” and “green leadership”—right up until the next gas shortage, blackouts, or export collapse.
In America, this would be headline news with cabinet meetings called in a panic and labor unrest on the streets. In Germany, it’s just another week of polite consensus, wind-power pressers, and a government ready to add another €40 billion in promised “energy cuts” for business—which everyone knows will come far too late.
The Germans thought they could run a post-industrial society on hope, regulations, and a few clouds of solar panels—but you can’t repeal the laws of economics, any more than you can run a steel mill on good intentions. Now the bill is coming due.
People ask: Who killed German manufacturing?
Answer: Look to the bureaucracy, the climate alarmists, the energy planners, and the eco-consultants. And remember:
Europe’s lesson today is your problem, tomorrow.
Sadly,
w.
For Those New To The Site: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are referring to. While I can defend my words, I can’t defend your interpretation of my words.
MasterResource has chronicled the rise and fall of the large, government-enabled rooftop solar company, Sunnova Energy International, Inc. Led by the toothy Enron-ex John Berger (who made millions of dollars at the expense of just about everyone else, including taxpayers), Sunnova is yet another case study of business failure under political capitalism (versus free-market capitalism).
“Subsidies like the DOE’s guarantees can incentivize firms to prioritize short-term gains over long-term compliance. Sunnova’s aggressive sales tactics, which targeted vulnerable consumers, were enabled by its belief that federal backing insulated it from accountability.” (Issac Lane, below)
MasterResource has chronicled the rise and fall of the large, government-enabled rooftop solar company, Sunnova Energy International, Inc. Led by the toothy Enron-ex John Berger (who made millions of dollars at the expense of just about everyone else, including taxpayers), Sunnova is yet another case study of business failure under political capitalism (versus free-market capitalism).
Sunnova’s demise is part of an overall shakeout in the government-enabled rooftop solar business (SunPower, Mosaic Solar, etc.). A political boom-political bust industry.
The cancellation of Sunnova Energy’s $3 billion Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee in 2025 marks a watershed moment for investors in the clean energy sector. What began as a high-profile federal backing for solar infrastructure has unraveled into a cautionary tale of corporate governance failures, regulatory overreach, and the perils of betting on firms reliant on politically opaque subsidy processes. For investors, the Sunnova saga underscores a critical lesson: in the green energy race, transparency, ethical compliance, and financial rigor matter far more than government connections.
Lane identified three key factors: “predatory business practices, financial mismanagement, and shifting political winds.”
Regarding predation:
Sunnova’s history of targeting elderly and low-income homeowners with aggressive sales tactics—such as隐瞒 [hidden] fees and exaggerating savings—triggered lawsuits and congressional investigations. A Minnesota Attorney General lawsuit, for instance, alleged that Sunnova concealed $35 million in hidden costs across nearly 5,000 loans. These practices, which violated the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), eroded public trust and made the company a political liability.
Regarding Financial Fragility:
Sunnova entered 2025 with $8.46 billion in debt and negative cash flow, prompting auditors to label it a “going concern.” High-interest loans (e.g., a $185 million term loan at 15% APR) and a shift in customer demand from loans to leases/PPAs further strained liquidity. By April 2025, the company filed for bankruptcy, rendering its DOE-backed Project Hestia—a residential solar and virtual power plant initiative—unviable.
Regarding Politics:
The Trump administration’s pivot to nuclear energy and rollback of Biden-era green subsidies sealed Sunnova’s fate. The DOE, now led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, prioritized “proven” technologies and tightened scrutiny on conditional loan guarantees. Sunnova’s $3 billion guarantee, tied to consumer loans rather than direct corporate funding, became a casualty of this shift.
Lane usefully censored the government’s “green energy” loans:
The DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which approved Project Hestia in 2023, faces accusations of favoring politically connected firms over merit. Sunnova’s loan guarantee, finalized amid congressional probes into its sales practices, raises questions about due diligence. As Jigar Shah, a former DOE official, noted, such subsidies risk becoming tools of “regulatory capture” rather than engines of clean energy progress.
And “moral hazard” in this regard:
Subsidies like the DOE’s guarantees can incentivize firms to prioritize short-term gains over long-term compliance. Sunnova’s aggressive sales tactics, which targeted vulnerable consumers, were enabled by its belief that federal backing insulated it from accountability.
Issac Lane longs for “ethical green energy investing.” Good luck with that; the romantic view of government and private-sector political dealings, calling for “rigorous governance safeguards” involving “transparency,” “sustainable business models,” and “financial resilience.” But he fails to understand how the problem is political in the first place. The adage “The market picks winners, leaving losers for government” applies.
Government support in the form of loan guarantees or subsidies has a history of finding companies like Solyndra and others that go out of business or declare bankruptcy despite infusions of government financial help. The latest example is a solar panel company called Sunnova, Inc….
Sunnova was a commercial and residential solar company that sold and leased clean energy technology, performed solar panel installations, and even offered financing plans such as loans. The company did business all over the country, especially in California, Puerto Rico, and New Jersey.
Back in September 2023 … the US Department of Energy closed the deal on a $3.3 billion loan guarantee to Sunnova in support of the company’s “Project Hestia” program, … with the stated goal of making “distributed energy resources” more available to homeowners.
The project used a “virtual power plant model” … to offer government-backed loans to customers that would otherwise not be able to afford rooftop solar.
Yet what Sunnova also had was a parade of red flags that should have raised concerns within the LPO. As the loan guarantee was being awarded, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) had flagged the company for a “pattern of complaints” about its sales practices and customer service. The Better Business Bureau last accredited the company in 2019, and despite Sunnova’s claim that it was “working closely” to reacquire accreditation, the bureau noted that “…the BBB is not able to work with Sunnova Energy Corporation at this time to have accreditation reinstated as the business currently does not meet the BBB’s Standards for Accreditation.”
Sunnova also had problems in Puerto Rico, where the island’s Energy Bureau required it to change business practices after getting complaints from customers about its contracts and billing procedures. Customers alleged that their signatures had been transplanted onto restrictive contracts, and that Sunnova salespersons made false representations as to the value of the product…. Even worse, the only recourse Sunnova allowed customers was an in-house arbitration process, sometimes taking place thousands of miles away in Texas – a requirement that the Energy Bureau determined was illegal….
Six months after the award, in December 2023, a group of congressmen asked that very question, citing the company’s history of shady business practices and comparing it to Solyndra Inc., a notorious solar cell manufacturer that went bankrupt in 2011 despite receiving more than $500 million in stimulus funds during the Obama administration.
The congressional inquiry also focused on the [DOE Loan Program Office] director, Jigar Shah. Shah is linked indirectly to Sunnova through an industry group called the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable. Cleantech, which Shah cofounded in 2019, shared a board member (Anne Slaughter Andrews) with Sunnova. A solar industry veteran, Shah left the LPO in January in front of the incoming Trump administration, though he has remained active in clean energy spaces.
Furthermore, Shah has been accused of using his role as the director of the LPO to benefit Cleantech, operating a “pay-to-play” scheme with his former organization as a beneficiary. Shah continued to be listed on the Cleantech website until 2023, years after he joined the Department of Energy in March 2021. During this time, he also continued to appear at Cleantech events for loan-seeking companies, including a “Deploy23” conference that Cleantech invited the LPO to cohost in 2023….
In February 2025, Sunnova held its annual meeting for its retail dealers. Despite being months in arrears on payments to these dealers and struggling to handle its mounting debt, the company urged its dealers to keep marketing and selling its solar panels, encouraging their patience and promising them payment…. Some dealers feared having their accounts shut down if they did not agree to the change….
The struggling company reported nearly $9 billion in funded debt…. Sunnova has since announced the sale of its business operations and assets to a group controlled by GoodFinch Management for $25 million. Meanwhile, all those subsidiary dealers are saddled with about $347 million in unpaid funds, with no clear path or timeline for getting the money they are owed.
While they wait, Sunnova’s executives won’t. On July 15, Sunnova asked the bankruptcy court for permission to offer a $7 million incentive plan to seven members of its top leadership, including its CEO. This, the company told the court, would ensure that these officers are “properly incentivized” during the bankruptcy process.
A recent article from The Guardian, “Cop30: calls for new urgency to talks as studies show global warming may reach 2.5C – latest updates,” by Nina Lakhani and Ajit Niranjan, presents a rolling narrative suggesting that the world is heading toward 2.5°C of warming and that extreme weather linked to fossil fuels is already causing increased damage. This is highly misleading if not outright false. Historical and present-day data show no increase in severe weather due to climate change having breached the previous target of 1.5°C of warming.
A recent article from The Guardian, “Cop30: calls for new urgency to talks as studies show global warming may reach 2.5C – latest updates,” by Nina Lakhani and Ajit Niranjan, presents a rolling narrative suggesting that the world is heading toward 2.5°C of warming and that extreme weather linked to fossil fuels is already causing increased damage. This is highly misleading if not outright false. Historical and present-day data show no increase in severe weather due to climate change having breached the previous target of 1.5°C of warming.
TheGuardian says, “extreme weather supercharged by the burning of oil, gas and coal is causing death and destruction in communities across the world,” and that “studies show global warming may reach 2.5C.” It also frames every flood, drought, storm, and humanitarian crisis as evidence of an accelerating climate emergency tied directly to fossil fuel emissions.
Observational data tells a more restrained and far less apocalyptic story. NOAA tide-gauge records, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report on risk assessment both show that while the planet has warmed, the evidence for worsening trends in many extreme weather categories remains weak or regionally mixed. A copy of the table published in that report is shown below, with the highlighted yellow areas showing where climate change has not materialized as worsening events.
Hurricanes have not experienced a long-term increase in landfalls or intensity in the United States according to NOAA’s historical database, and the IPCC AR6 report expresses low confidence in any global increase in hurricane frequency. Readers can verify this themselves in “Climate at a Glance – Hurricanes.”
Floods, too, show no global increasing trend; the IPCC AR6 report explicitly states low confidence in a global signal for flood frequency or magnitude, contradicting the article’s implication that every major rainfall event is “supercharged.”
Most notably, The Guardian silently moves the goalposts. For years, activists and aligned media insisted that surpassing 1.5°C would trigger catastrophe—crop failures, explosive storm activity, “unlivable” regions. Yet when the world has briefly touched that temperature anomaly in certain datasets, none of the promised apocalyptic benchmarks materialized. The limit was nothing more than a political talking point from the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, as described in this Associated Press (AP) article: The magic 1.5: What’s behind climate talks’ key elusive goal. The AP admitted, “in a way both the 1.5 and 2 degree C thresholds are somewhat arbitrary.”
Instead of acknowledging the political nature of the temperature goal posts and the failed predictions of disaster that were supposed to flow from it, Lakhani and Niranjan simply move the goal post, claiming 2.5°C as the new threshold of climate driven doom, as if simply shifting the goal post to a new supposed tipping point will keep the narrative afloat. This shameless pattern of “the world is getting hotter and it is your fault” has been repeated over and over again by the media for years.
The article also refuses to admit an inconvenient truth: There have been 30 COPS to date, and not one has reduced either global temperatures or carbon dioxide emissions or even slowed their trajectory. See the two graphs below:
These conferences and the agreements that flow from them are the supposed vehicles for planetary salvation. Based on the data shown above, thus far, they have a perfect record of failure. This is okay because there is no real-world evidence that rising CO2 levels or modest increases in temperature pose an existential threat to human prosperity or existence.
Temperatures today correlate with natural variability, the long-term recovery from the Little Ice Age, and regional land-surface warming influenced by urban heat-island effects—none of which are discussed in The Guardian article. Simply convening diplomats to issue increasingly dire communiqués has never altered these underlying drivers.
And this points to what The Guardian ignores. Weather is not climate—one month of rain in Gaza, a drought in Tehran, or a storm in Wales does not constitute a global climate trend. Infrastructure failures, deforestation, population growth in floodplains, and political conflict often explain weather-related damage far better than a mild increase in the made-up metric of global average temperature. The Gaza flooding described in the article stems from war; destroyed drainage systems, razed farmland, and shattered housing—not from marginal changes in global average temperature. The same applies to drought vulnerability in Iran, where water mismanagement and over-extraction have been well-documented for decades. Yet the authors of The Guardian’s article consistently attribute all hardship to climate change, erasing institutional and government policy failures.
Lakhani and Niranjan also fail to mention the century-long decline in temperature-related deaths—as well as decline in deaths from extreme weather. Both are a direct result of fossil-fuel-powered resilience—and it ignores the benefits reliable energy brings to developing nations.
By stitching together a tapestry of unrelated disasters and labeling them all “supercharged by fossil fuels,” The Guardian grossly misleads its readers about what observational data actually show. Moving the catastrophe threshold from 1.5°C to 2.5°C without acknowledging the previous failed predictions attached to the former temperature target only underscores how bogus the climate narrative is.
After three decades and 30 COP conferences, global temperatures remain unmoved by policy declarations, yet The Guardian continues presenting these conferences as if success at these conferences puts humans in control of a planetary thermostat. Readers deserve reporting grounded in measured evidence and proof, not a never-ending escalation of dramatic claims that shift whenever reality refuses to cooperate.
This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission.
When it comes to energy, the main concern for working class Americans and families in general is affordability.
For large tech corporations – and specifically, the huge data centers necessary to fuel the emerging artificial intelligence boom – the focus is on access to abundant and reliable energy.
Are those divergent concerns inherently incompatible?
In fact, what at first might seem like competing objectives should, thanks to free markets, dovetail into a confluence beneficial to all, as an all-of-the-above approach to energy resources coupled with a modernized electric grid boosts overall output while simultaneously lowering costs.
Bolstering such a prospect would be congressional passage of the Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act (ARC-ES) recently introduced by Ohio Congressman Troy Balderson (R), which guarantees that our most affordable and reliable energy sources remain crucial components of the overall energy picture.
Right now, U.S. electricity reliability is hampered by the fact that from coast to coast our nation is served by a patchwork network comprised of three major grids.
As described by EBSCO, a leading provider of research databases, “[T]he grid’s infrastructure has a number of problems. One major problem is the age of the infrastructure. The energy grid was pieced together over the course of a century, and all the parts were introduced at various times. Many of these parts are getting older and becoming less reliable.”
Another drawback is that “the U.S. energy grid has no real way of storing power for use in the future. All the power that people use at a particular time must be created at the moment it is needed.”
Yet another challenge is the fact that the grids were originally built to convert traditional energy sources like coal and gas. “Renewables” such as wind and solar are not easily integrated into the existing grid, in part because of the relatively remote areas in which they have been built.
“Today’s transmission system simply is not designed to ingest all that remote power,” as explained by the Energy Department’s national laboratory for energy systems. “Bursts of power on an especially sunny day in the desert could cause grid faults – little blips that can propagate and cause outages – or overload power lines.”
Pressure from the Biden administration to set artificial deadlines to transition from traditional energy sources to renewables was a recipe for disaster, as our outdated grid system was simply not equipped to handle such a rapid conversion. Had those unrealistic objectives been maintained, the result would have been disastrous on two fronts – falling far short of meeting the energy demands of evolving technology while leading to greater price hikes for average households.
The Energy Department’s Grid Modernization Initiative is working with partners to create the “grid of the future [that] will deliver resilient, reliable, flexible, secure, sustainable, and affordable electricity.”
As an Energy Department analysis shows, a modernized, integrated grid can better meet the demands of emerging technology by making the grid “smarter and more resilient through the use of cutting-edge technologies, equipment, and controls that communicate and work together to deliver electricity more reliably and efficiently can greatly reduce the frequency and duration of power outages, reduce storm impacts, and restore service faster when outages occur.”
For average consumers, a modernized grid allows them to “better manage their own energy consumption and costs because they have easier access to their own data.” The grid of the future will also feature meters and sensors adjusting to power ebbs and flows, voltage regulation reducing waste, and lower operational expenses for utilities, resulting in lower costs for typical households.
Environmentally, a modernized grid more efficiently integrating an array of energy resources for cleaner outputs is a much more realistic way to reduce emissions and protect our environment than “net zero” objectives or “carbon credit” schemes that can never realistically be achieved.
It will be crucial that modernization initiatives utilize the all-of-the-above approach represented by ARC-ES to keep reliable and affordable energy at the forefront of electricity generation while allowing time to upgrade the grids and eventually accommodate the cautious integration of renewables as part of the energy mix. Why? Because reliability is a national security imperative.
A key component of the ARC-ES philosophy is a requirement that energy resources must guarantee that electricity is dispatchable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Reliable sources such as natural gas must be available “to complement and provide backup to renewable energy sources during periods of low availability.” Also crucial is “the capability to ramp up or down electricity generation within one hour, stabilizing the electrical grid.”
The “all-of-the-above” approach of ARC-ES creates a tide that lifts all boats, providing electricity that is both reliable and affordable – not defective and wasteful because the government is picking and choosing winners and losers.
A modernized grid following the principles of ARC-ES that utilizes all of our crucial energy resources – including renewables when their integration is reasonable and affordable – will provide the volume and reliability sought by businesses, and the affordability crucial for average household budgets.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
A little over two months earlier (17 January 1912), Captain Scott and his companions arrived at the South Pole only to discover that the Norwegians were there first. The Norwegian party led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Extremely disappointed, Scott and his men began their return crossing on 19 January 1912. It was a sad journey. They encountered unusually cold temperatures during March (Scott, 1914; Solomon, 2002). Two members of Scott’s polar party, Edgar Evans and Captain Lawrence Oates, perished before the party camped for the last time
On Thursday, 29 March 1912, Captain Scott (1914) made the final entry in his Journal. He wrote:
Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.
R. SCOTT.
For God’s sake look after our people
A little over two months earlier (17 January 1912), Captain Scott and his companions arrived at the South Pole only to discover that the Norwegians were there first. The Norwegian party led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911. Extremely disappointed, Scott and his men began their return crossing on 19 January 1912. It was a sad journey. They encountered unusually cold temperatures during March (Scott, 1914; Solomon, 2002). Two members of Scott’s polar party, Edgar Evans and Captain Lawrence Oates, perished before the party camped for the last time
Since 19 March 1912, Scott and two remaining members of the Polar Party (Doctor Edward Adrian Wilson and Henry Robertson Bowers) had been unable to resume their march due to a persisting blizzard. They were only 11 miles (less than 18 km) from the One Ton Depot that had a fresh supply of food and fuel
This Final Blizzard became a matter of controversy nearly a century later. Every so often, a scientific claim becomes so widely repeated that it hardens into “fact,” even when the evidence beneath it consists of… well… let’s just call it creative meteorology. Such is the case with the final blizzard in Captain Scott’s 1912 Antarctic tragedy. Many writers before and after Solomon published her book have claimed that Scott was dishonest or fabricated the weather, but none of them were prominent atmospheric scientists who actually worked in Antarctica. That is precisely why Solomon’s assertions carried unusual weight—and why their scientific flaws matter even more
In The Coldest March, Susan Solomon famously concludes that such a storm was “virtually impossible.” She writes:
Wilson and Bowers met their deaths with the injured Scott, but the scientific constraints of modern meteorology as shown here suggest that their deaths may have been a matter of choice rather than chance. Whether such a choice was made, and whether it reflected their own dedication or an order by a desperate Scott vainly attempting to save legacies rather than lives is a question not for science but for the human heart
This allegation has been widely echoed in popular media. Coverage in The New York Times (Chang, 2001), The Guardian (Glancey, 2001), and the Los Angeles Times (Hotz, 2001), all repeated the quote about “a desperate Scott vainly attempting to save legacies rather than lives”
But here’s the problem: the science doesn’t agree. Not modern satellite imagery, not historical data, not even the meteorological literature available before the book was published.
Zinkova (2025) has shown that the blizzard unfolded much as Scott described. Building on that foundation, this post turns to Solomon’s claims, focusing on the evidence that was overlooked or misinterpreted.
Corner Camp: The New Oracle of Truth?
One of Solomon’s central arguments rests on the assumption that if Corner Camp didn’t have a blizzard, then Scott’s Last Camp couldn’t have had one either. To prove the claim, Solomon (2002 p. 318) presents Figure 68, captioned as follows:
Figure 68. Winds observed at the automated weather station near Last Camp and near Corner Camp (stations 4 and 3, respectively; see map 2) in March 1998. Note that the winds at the two locations closely track each other. The similarities shown have been observed in every strong March blizzard measured on the Barrier in the automated record (since 1984).
To evaluate this claim, I examined AWS data for March 1996—well within the 15-year period Solomon cites (1984–1998). As the graph below shows, the winds at the two sites do not track each other at all in this particular situation. In fact, the graph shows that on March 18, 19, 1996, during a strong blizzard at Scott’s Last Camp, Corner Camp remains nearly calm. And this isn’t an isolated anomaly: several similar cases appear in that same month alone.
In other words, the central premise of Solomon’s argument—“no storm at Corner Camp = Scott must have exaggerated”—collapses immediately when actual data are examined.
The Case of the Selectively Quoted Explorer
In the book, Solomon (2002, p. 311) cites a story from Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World:
The ferocious wind that spirited away the tent of the Cape Crozier party and threatened the survival of Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard in July 1911 was a textbook example of a katabatic blizzard. It blew with hurricane force at morethan seventy miles per hour, but the trio survived the storm in large part because it subsided in less than forty-eight hours, when the reservoir of cold air was emptied
However, in the same paragraph where Cherry-Garrard recounts his own blizzard experience, he also refers to the accounts of others, noting that “parties which had come to Cape Crozier in the spring had experienced blizzards which lasted eight or ten days”:
I knew that parties which had come to Cape Crozier in the spring had experienced blizzards which lasted eight or ten days. (Cherry-Garrard ,1922 p. 282)
The omission of the “eight or ten days” blizzards in Solomon (2002) is puzzling. Not at the same page but in the same book, Cherry-Garrard (1922 p. 446) describes yet another blizzard. It was an eight days long blizzard at Cape Evans:
“This blizzard lasted for eight days , up till then the longest blizzard we had experienced [at Cape Evans]: ” It died as it had lived , blowing hard to the last , averaging 68 miles an hour from the south , and then 56 miles an hour from the north finally back to the south , and so to calm.“
This record was not obscure. It was not lost. It was simply… not used. An eight-day blizzard at Cape Evans could easily have stretched to ten days or longer at Scott’s Last Camp. The reason is that barrier blizzards strike Cape Evans and the Last Camp simultaneously (Zinkova 2025). Yet when a barrier blizzard subsides, a katabatic blizzard often follows at the Last Camp (but not at Cape Evans), prolonging the storm’s impact (Zinkova, 2025)
A Decade Later
One might hope that, with time, the scientific errors in The Coldest March would fade away quietly. Instead, ten years after the book’s publication, Solomon (2012) repeated the same arguments in a public presentation—now with an additional meteorological flourish. While responding to questions (Solomon, 2012) declared:
The conditions on the barrier are pretty strongly katabatic. I mean, when you have this kind of blizzard, that’s normally what you’re getting, because you’re shielded so well from cyclones moving in from the, from the coast. So it’s a very different kind of meteorology.
The conditions on the Ross Ice Shelf are not strongly katabatic at all, and in the region of Scott’s Last Camp, virtually every blizzard—katabatic, barrier, or cyclonic—is driven by synoptic-scale cyclones or mesoscale cyclonic activity.
It is unclear how this “shielded from cyclones” allegation came about because in her own book, Solomon (2002 p.350) cited the paper by Bromwich and Carrasco titled: Cyclonically forced barrier winds along the Transantarctic mountains near Ross Island.
To claim that the Ross Ice Shelf contradicts the very mechanisms that produce the winds Solomon attempted to analyze. In short, a decade later, the misunderstanding wasn’t corrected. It was amplified.
The satellite perspective
If anyone still doubts how easily Solomon’s interpretation can be disproved, consider this: a single infrared satellite image is enough to show why her core assumption—that Corner Camp and Scott’s Last Camp always experience storms together—is scientifically untenable. Below is one example (April 15, 2018)
In this infrared frame, a katabatic blizzard is clearly pouring down from the plateau onto the Ross Ice Shelf, slamming directly into the region of Scott’s Last Camp (S). Meanwhile Corner Camp is calm and quiet. This kind of decoupling is routine, not exceptional.
And why does the katabatic flow show up in infrared? Because descending katabatic air warms adiabatically, producing awarmer signature on IR imagery compared to the frigid surface beneath it.
What else do we see in this very same image? A well-defined cyclone over the Ross Ice Shelf driving the synoptic setup. Without this cyclone katabatic winds would not have been able to reach the area of Scott’s Last Camp because they need pressure gradients to traverse the Ross Ice Shelf.
I looked at hundreds of infrared satellite images to learn about every possible situation at the Ross Ice Shelf. On the other hand, Solomon (2002, 2012) relied on a single infrared satellite image—Figure 65 (Solomon, 2002, p.312)—as the basis for her broad meteorological conclusions and her remarkable speculation that Scott may have ordered Wilson and Bowers to die. Apparently drawing her conclusion from a single satellite image, Solomon (2002, p. 317) stated:
“The two locations [Scott’s Last Camp and Corner Cam] are inextricably linked by the basic physics of fluid flow: the southerly wind from the Barrier has no option but to continue on its course until it passes Corner Camp […] “
Yet even this lone satellite image reveals a cyclone, which Solomon seems not to have recognized at all.
Solomon’s misunderstanding of katabatic winds hadn’t shifted even a decade later. In 2012, she told her audience that the Ross Ice Shelf is essentially a flat barrier, and that the wind can only follow the flow because there’s nothing out there to break it up.
Solomon (2002, p. 310) quoted Captain Scott’s Message to the Public, where he rather plainly described “a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W.”? That wind direction points to a katabatic flow spilling from Byrd Glacier (Seefeldt et al., 2007).
And, more importantly, a wind coming from W.S.W. or S.W. at Scott’s Last Camp would not detour to Corner Camp, which sits almost directly south. In actuality, the direction and speed of katabatic winds are as variable as the weather systems that drive them, enabling them to traverse long distances across the Ross Ice Shelf. For example, the image below shows a situation in which neither of the two marked locations experienced a katabatic blizzard.
The following image indicates that Scott’s Last Camp was struck by a katabatic blizzard, while Corner Camp remained calm. Notice the cyclone
Solomon’s book did not reference several highly relevant papers on the Ross Ice Shelf airstream. For example, an article by Bromwich, Carrasco et al. (1993), in which the authors described a katabatic wind surge in July 1988 and specifically stated that every site recorded stronger-than-monthly-average winds… except Corner Camp, which apparently opted out of the excitement. Corner Camp (AWS 07 in their article) was the only place that “did not record stronger wind than its monthly average” (Bromwich, Carrasco et al.,1993).
In summary, this cascade of methodological failures in Solomon (2002) ultimately crystallized into a global media narrative that tarred the reputation of Captain Scott.
For those interested in what actually happened—and why the Final Blizzard likely transpired the way Captain Scott described it—my peer-reviewed analysis is available [here]. See also my Youtube [video.] Both explain in detail what the satellite data, the reanalysis, and the historical records actually show—namely, that the March 1912 storm was a straightforward product of synoptic-scale cyclonicic activity
References
Bromwich, D. H., Carrasco, J. F., Liu, Z., & Tzeng, R.-Y. (1993). Hemispheric atmospheric variations and oceanographic impacts associated with katabatic surges across the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 98(D7), 13045–13062. https://doi.org/10.1029/93JD00879
Scott R. F. (1914).Scott’s Last Expedition. Smith, Elder and Company, London.
Seefeldt M.W., Cassano J.J., and Parish T. R. (2007). Dominant Regimes of the Ross Ice Shelf Surface Wind Field during Austral Autumn 2005. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 46: 1933–1955, https://doi.org/10.1175/2007JAMC1442.1.
Solomon, S. (2002). The Coldest March: Scott’s Fatal Antarctic Expedition. Yale University Press.
Solomon, S. (2012). The Coldest March: Scott’s Fatal Antarctic Expedition. https://youtu.be/5LoWsLqcizA (accessed 10 January 2022).
Zinkova, M. (2025). An exceptional March 1912 blizzard (the Final Blizzard) that sealed the fate of Captain Scott and his party. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, 57(1), 2522490. https://doi.org/10.1080/15230430.2025.2522490
Sounds like the media are finally waking up to Miliband’s lies:
This new analysis is written by Ben James of Axle Energy, who are strong supporters of Net Zero:
From the Mail:
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero drive will add £160 to annual electricity bills by 2030 – despite wholesale energy prices falling over the same period, according to new research.
An analysis of costs that make up household electricity bills found that Britons will be paying £265 more a year by the end of the decade.
This is due to a rise in green levies, also known as policy costs, to help meet Labour’s ambition of decarbonising the UK’s electricity grid by 2030.
The extra charges will more than offset an expected £105 reduction in the cost of wholesale electricity as a result of cheaper renewable power.
It means an overall increase in average electricity bills of £160, or 16 per cent, by 2030.
The penultimate sentence is an outright lie; clearly the Mail reporter has not read the report properly. Wholesale prices won’t fall “because of cheaper renewable power”; they will fall because the price of gas is expected to come down. But more on that later.
His data and assumptions are all linked, and you can hover over each segment.
These are the main points:
Renewable Obligations will reduce annual bills by £34, as a result of older renewable generators leaving the scheme.
Wholesale costs will save a further £71, reflecting lower gas prices. This is in line with DESNZ projections for international gas prices.
Capacity Market, FIT and CfD subsidies will increase bills by £57
System balancing will add £50
Grid upgrades, both transmission and distribution will add a further £101
Of course, the £160 increase only tells part of the story. Households consume less than a third of UK electricity. Higher electricity prices for business and government will push up the price we pay for their goods and increase our taxes. One way or another, the public ends up paying the bill!
In total terms, the real cost to households will be more like £500 a year, equivalent to £13 billion a year. This is on top of the £20 billion or so we are already paying.
None of these should come as any surprise at all, because NESO told us the same a year ago:
NESO projected that labour’s Clean Power 2030 plan would push up balancing and grid costs by £25/MWh, around £8 billion a year. That does not even include the cost of upgrading local distribution networks or all of the grid upgrades.
Moreover, the claim that cost of generation would fall by £15/MWh was an outright lie. It was based on the assumption of a massive hike in carbon tax on gas generation, which consequently allowed claims of “cheaper renewables”.
As Ben James calculates, extra renewables will increase generation costs, not reduce them, probably by something in the region of £5 billion a year.
Meanwhile DESNZ is still in denial:
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: ‘We don’t accept this analysis, which over-estimates future costs and ignores the benefits of clean energy.
‘Energy bills are still too high, which is why the Government is taking urgent action to support families this winter, including expanding the £150 Warm Home Discount to 2.7 million more households.
‘The only way to bring down energy bills for good is by making Britain a clean energy superpower, which will get us off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel prices and onto clean, homegrown power that we control.’
If anything, Ben James has underestimated future costs, given the rocketing costs of offshore wind power. Moreover, his figures are underpinned by NESO’s – does DESNZ “not accept” them either?
As for the “benefits of green energy”, there are none!
The Warm Homes Discount the clown is muttering about does nothing to address the underlying problem of high energy prices – it is simply a redistribution from poor people to even poorer ones. (To be eligible, you need to be on some sort of benefit, such as Pension and Universal Credit). It is worth £150 pa, which will of course soon be wiped out by Miliband’s price increases!
Clean energy superpower! The meaningless rantings of Ed Miliband.
As for that “rollercoaster”, it is currently near the top – we should be taking a free ride to the bottom, not locking ourselves into 20-year fixed high prices for renewables.
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